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The iconoclastic zeal that accompanied the Reformation brought with it the destruction of a flourishing tradition of late gothic painting, and marked a fundamental caesura in Zurich’s artistic tradition. But it was not until the 1920s that it became possible to assemble a small, representative selection of Swiss altarpieces. Thanks to the foundations established by the chemist Professor Leopold Ruzicka (1949) and the art dealer David M. Koetser (1988) the Kunsthaus is today able to boast an unusually high-quality collection of paintings from the golden age of Dutch painting, the Flemish and Italian baroque and the Venetian Settecento.